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According to a study by CorpU, a sample of 500 public firms with a corporate university outperformed the Russel 3000 index, on a 10 year period (2001-2011). Thus, firms with corporate universities had an average return of 26% versus 11% for other firms without a corporate university.

A new report by Booz & Co provides a ranking of the top ICT 50 global firms and the digitization ecosystems. It appears that IBM is at the top, followed by Oracle and Microsoft.

“Businesses around the world are looking to gain an edge in the race to digitize—to seamlessly incorporate new computing, communications, and collaboration technologies; to streamline their operations; and to connect more closely with customers, suppliers, and partners. To do so, they must look to the continually evolving ecosystem of hardware, software, IT services, and telecom companies. These sectors provide the products and services that make digitization possible.

Booz & Co looked at them across four critical criteria: financial performance, portfolio strength, go-to-market footprint, and innovation and branding.

“Every company in every industry has its own market value proposition: a way to play that represents the way it chooses to create value in the market, ideally matched with its strongest capabilities. Companies’ ways of playing can be grouped according to the basic foundational approach they take. By classifying each of the ICT 50 as one or more of these “puretones,” we were able to determine which value propositions seem most advantaged in the market—for now.

The ability to turn ideas into useful new products, services and ways of doing things is the wellspring of prosperity for any developed country

The companies that invest most in innovation tend to grow faster than ones that don’t; and the countries that invest most in innovation do as well

Nor is it a coincidence that many of the nation’s doing best today in innovation have articulated a clear vision of where they think their future wealth and jobs will come from

Countries as diverse as Korea, Finland, Israel and Singapore have sustained a mood of optimism and possibility through the crisis, and given business a sense of the future gains that make investment today worthwhile.

A self-preservation attitude still prevails in the UK

Unfortunately the current economic debate in the UK has pushed innovation and questions of long–term growth to the margins

But if we want to take advantage of the opportunities on offer in the next decade from new technologies, new markets, and new ways of doing things, we have to face up to the gaps, the failings and the many ways in which institutions and markets aren’t well designed to make the most of new ideas. They stay stuck in the past.

It is hard to calculate precisely the size of the gap, but some of the analysis that follows suggests that in the UK, they may be under–investing in innovation to the tune of £38 billion a year.

Transformation from industrial decay shows that change for the better can happen relatively quickly where there is the will. Currently, we leave to many as “walking dead” and badly under support those in finance and resources required that show the way forward to ‘regenerate’.

Experimentation. Innovation is a risky business. Breakthroughs only come from a willingness to push at boundaries, to take risks, and, sometimes, to fail. What matters is not backing winning projects every time, but backing a good portfolio of projects. Experimentation is not easy, especially in an adversarial political system that is often very risk adverse due in large part to this inherent nature. Risks need to be taken in the face of huge challenges like ageing or climate change, as well as in making the most of great new opportunities like the Internet of things or synthetic biology.

Entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs are essential to an innovative economy: they don’t usually come up with ideas, but they do work out how to put ideas into practice. Entrepreneurship is also important to good innovation policy-making. The flip–side of an experimental innovation policy is the need for entrepreneurial leadership and challenge within the system. Entrepreneurial leadership within the system can be valuable. These kinds of entrepreneurial figures provide a valuable antidote to consensual policy that works primarily with incumbents.

Openness. Good innovation policy cannot be made by government alone and certainly cannot be delivered solely through state bodies. Innovation flourishes when businesses, research organizations, and intermediaries such as standards bodies and trade bodies come together to identify and address major challenges. What is important though is government cannot rely simply on assembling interested groups – this risks capture by incumbents and vested interests, it needs very open platforms where all can participate, working towards their goals but recognizing the essential need of all the diverse participates on the platforms.

Ambition. Finally, innovation policy needs ambition, with the right mix of challenge and focus. Government’s power as a leader, as a customer and as a regulator matters as much as its narrow role of a supporter of research and development. Finland, Korea and Israel are all countries that have managed to make this a reality. In all cases, leadership has come from the top but been broadly based.

Social innovation

Social innovations can offer great potential. The wastefulness, in both human and financial terms, of the way we run our healthcare systems, the way we care for old people, and the way we treat the most excluded in society, offers such potential to resolve through the appropriate innovation applications.

The right social innovations could unlock as much value as many great social innovations did in the nineteenth century. During past periods of rapid change, like the mid–to–late nineteenth century, radical social innovation and reform proved huge growth potential. They can once more; we need to move from self-preservation through constant commercialization into community engagement and building sustaining values back into our lives.

Innovation Policy Proposals:

The process of making innovation policy must be future–focused. The value of foresight exercises are recommended which are not great at predicting the future but better at making those who undertake them recognize the future when it manifests itself

Policy also needs to be aligned. A frequent complaint made by foreign businesses looking to make major R&D investments in the UK is that government policy is poorly aligned: helping to orchestrate such things as land, planning, training, supply chain development, and links to universities

It seems UK innovation policy lags behind that of Germany and Japan for example, both of which use grand challenges as a way of organizing and focusing innovative activity.